With the sanction of the Supreme Court, we have traveled back in time to the 17th century when witches burned in Europe—and hanged in Salem. Every ICE raid on a car wash or a Hyundai factory is a miniature witch trial.
Salem and the Enlightenment
In Salem, “witches” were frequently convicted through “spectral evidence.” Women who had often been coerced to confess themselves would accuse others, often in dramatic fits in court—complete with screaming, convulsions and pointing at the accused.
“I confess I have been in the snare of the Devil… and the Devil told me he was my God, and I should serve him… He carried me to five-mile pond, where I saw a great many witches sitting upon the bank.” —Deliverance Hobbs, April 1692
In exchange for their repentance, cooperating “witches” would often be spared their lives. At least 55 people “confessed” in 1692-93. Each confession pulled more names in, and spread the moral panic outward.
Some, however, refused to confess. 14 women and 5 men were hung in front of hundreds of people. One man, Giles Corey, was crushed to death by stones. The only words he uttered were: “More weight.”
The Salem witch trials—and the far wider religious persecution and moral panic in Europe from the 15th to the 17th centuries, where they sometimes did burn witches at the stake—provided a visceral example for Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, Voltaire and Montesquieu, all of whom influenced the American Revolution and the Constitution.
“Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most toleration, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.”
—Voltaire, Treatise on Toleration (1763)
The United States can be seen as the crown jewel of the Enlightenment project: Voltaire provided arguments against clerical rule; Montesquieu envisioned the separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial; and Locke provided the bridge between Protestant theonomy and the principles of liberty and democracy.
Anti-Enlightenment
The name of the “Dark Enlightenment” promoted by Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin and influential on a wide array of people including Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, JD Vance, and a significant faction of the Republican Party, is no accident. It should be more properly called the “Anti-Enlightenment.”
This movement is not just a reaction to the Enlightenment project of rationality, science, liberty and secular toleration—it is an annihilation of it. In the same way antimatter annihilates matter on contact, the Dark Enlightenment wants to obliterate the last four centuries of progress.
A casual look at Yarvin’s Twitter account of sadistic racism, antisemitism, anti-science polemics and raw antipathy towards democracy, provides a real-time example of the Dark Enlightenment in action.
These anti-Enlightenment forces are now functionally in control of the federal government, having surrounded Donald Trump—and put Peter Thiel’s backup plan, JD Vance, in as Vice President.
Pop-Up Witch Trials
Every ICE raid or unconstitutional stop on the street is now a legalized ritual—a pop-up witch trial, with black vans instead of gallows. But in the 21st century masked unidentified thugs are the judge and jury of people they choose to target based on a set of characteristics which include race, accent, and socioeconomic circumstances—in short, racial profiling. In making the determination of whether someone can be stopped on suspicion on being an undocumented immigrant, the ICE agents are, according to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, allowed to use their “common sense.”
“Common sense” is now the new “spectral evidence”—along with Yarvin’s preferred voodoo, “scientific racism.” In Yarvin’s world, and the world of people like Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, deporting or detaining millions of people is “only natural” because they have internalized superiority. Trump and his government believe that they, and their private army, should be able to round up people solely based on skin color, a group who they believe are inferior by definition.
What the Supreme Court did yesterday in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo is ratify the Trump regime’s “spectral evidence”—some ineffable combination of factors that Border Czar Tom Homan could not articulate this morning on television—as a rationale for state violence and incarceration. Homan’s entire appearance was propaganda.
“So this false narrative being pushed is a reason why there's over 1000% increase in the assault on ICE officers. So Supreme Court agreed with us yesterday on how we do these operations. I said from day one, we don't arrest somebody or detained somebody without reasonable suspicion. And reasonable suspicion has a group of factors you must take into consideration. Racial profiling is not happening at all. And the Supreme Court has agreed with that.“
Asked about whether he’s using racial profiling, Homan flat-out lies about the percentage of criminals being arrested by ICE. Homan applies the psychological tactic of DARVO—Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender—to blame the reporter for asking the question and implies the media is inciting an alleged “1000% increase in the assault on ICE officers.” This is not an administration official answering a question by a free press, it’s an unaccountable propagandist dipping into every tool he can find to deflect from the real answer.
In reality, ICE picks targets for lots of reasons, like when they showed up to harass Gavin Newsom’s announcement that he would redistrict California. But a recent raid on a nutrition bar factory, and a mass detention at a Hyundai factory show the true method: ICE picks a target based on some tip, rounds up anyone who isn’t white, detains them, and demands their papers.
Now that the Supreme Court has ratified this behavior, any brown person on the street, 65 million Latinos—citizens, documented, or undocumented—are fair game to have their Fourth Amendment rights violated at will.
A national witch hunt has been legalized.
The Surveillance-Carceral-Epistemic State
As I’ve described it, the final desired form of the current authoritarian coup of America is a totalitarian surveillance-carceral-epistemic state in which information and liberty are under federal control and privacy is non-existent. This would represent, in many ways, a return to the theocratic, feudalist monarchies of the Middle Ages—but instead of burning witches, we disappear them to CECOT.
The rejection of the Enlightenment is being operationalized, right in front of us.
Unfortunately, there are no obvious mechanisms from stopping this coup from finishing its job and destroying the Constitution—except elections. But there is no guarantee, and maybe no hope, of another free and fair election when the 21st century version of “spectral evidence”—“common sense”—is being used to ethnically cleanse the nation, under the eye of a theocratic Court.
Thomas Paine had a different idea of common sense, and a warning for those who would deny it.
“A government of our own is our natural right… Ye that oppose independence now, ye know not what ye do; ye are opening a door to eternal tyranny.”
— Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
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Bluesky 🦋: jim-stewartson
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Yarvin and those who follow him are deranged people, plain and simple. We talked about lunatics a couple of days ago. Deranged, lunatic, nut cases, whatever term one wants to use, that’s what we’re dealing with.
Is this what Kash Patel meant when he said this Misadministration was going to "carry out the biggest manhunt in history?" Or is this just the beginning? 🤔